On This Day in Aviation History-Germanwings Flight 9525 Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com, Wikipedia, Andrew Heneen, Flightrader24, Sebastien Mortier If anything, what scares you about flying? Though I didn’t dwell on the possibilities too much when I was flying USMC aircraft, when I did think about it or when we discussed the subject in…
On This Day in Aviation History: 1996 Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com, NASA, Getty Images According to History.com and downloaded from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/March-23/shannon-lucid-enters-mir on March 23, 2025, on this day in 1996 in aviation history “U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid transferred to the Russian space station Mir from the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis for a planned…
War is Hell. And Unappetizing Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com, US Army, Fotosearch/Getty Images *Warning* Don’t read this just prior to, during, or just after a meal. “War is hell” Union General Tecumseh Sherman was quoted as saying, and it certainly is as evidenced by the firebombing raid on Tokyo only a few months prior…
On This day in Aviation History: Da Nang Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com, Associated Press, United States Marine Corps, George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, (4th Edition; New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002) Da Nang, for those assigned there not long after 1965, was not so exotic, despite its exotic-sounding…
On This Day in Aviation History: The Caterpillar Club and Lindbergh Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: Wikipedia.com/Goodfellows Historical Foundation Caterpillar Club From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia downloaded from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club on March 5, 2025. A pin from a parachute company, possibly Switlik or Standard Parachute. This style is common in catalogs and auctions of military memorabilia. …
On This Day in Space and Aviation History in 1966: Venera 3 Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: Wikipedia, History.com Landing (even crash-landing) on another planet and as early as pre-internet and pre-desk top computers and cell phones? How did we do it? It seems implausible but we, in fact, did it! According to History.com and…
Sucker Holes Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: NASA, Avgeekery.com I have memory of a terrifying moment during my flight training at NAS Pensacola flying the T-28 Trojan back in the late 1970’s. I may be embellishing the terror I seem to remember, but not too much. Flying solo in a big, radial engine aircraft. I…
On This Day in 1978- Paper Maps Become Obsolete Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com, Clive Goddard and CartoonStock.com, United States Air Force I don’t know about you, but I was a GPS “holdout” for years. I told myself that if I succumbed to using GPS to get to one place or another, that I’d lose…